If Jeremiah Wright is a Prophet, Isaiah Wasn't

"In Madison, the late Rev. Alfred W. Swan, minister of the First Congregational Church (now part of the UCC) from 1930 to 1965, was regularly denounced for his preaching. One Sunday in 1952, Swan mounted the pulpit to announce 'I am not a Communist, and I have no intention of being one.' That was after Swan had criticized the Korean War, urged the country to make peace with China and suggested that Russians were better off than they had been before the 1917 Revolution. Not surprisingly, Swan regularly faced calls for his dismissal."

The Rev. Anthony B. "Tony" Robinson wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (March 28), "After 9/11, Wright charged that 'America's chickens are coming home to roost' … he said 'God damn America.' … Sounds like what the Bible calls a prophet."

The Dallas Morning News (March 29) reported, "More than two dozen well-known black preachers and scholars, in Dallas for a long-planned conference, offered unequivocal support Friday for one of their number who was not there. … Several of the scholars and preachers spoke at a news conference. They said that Dr. Wright's sermons fit into a long-standing black tradition of prophetic preaching."

The Rev. Marshall Hatch, pastor of New Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago, wrote in the Austin Weekly News (March 26): "It is providential that this has come in the midst of Holy Week 2008, a season when we commemorate the crucifixion of Christ and the vindication of God for faithfulness to prophetic speech."

The Dallas Morning News (March 19) quoted the Rev. Tyrone Gordon, pastor at St. Luke Community United Methodist Church in Dallas, as saying: "One thing I said to the church on this past Sunday is that a lot of us are taking it personally because it is an attack on the whole black prophetic experience."

Now, what are some of the comments that are so widely deemed "prophetic?"

"We've bombed Hiroshima, we've bombed Nagasaki, we've nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye."

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant. Because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards."

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America'? No, no, no, not 'God Bless America,' 'God Damn America.'"

"The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied."

As morally disturbing as the Rev. Wright's comments are, and as troubling as is the fact that the man favored to be the Democratic Party's candidate for president of the United States chose to stay in the reverend's church for 20 years, there is something even more disturbing in the widespread labeling of these comments as "prophetic."

It is one thing to have a broken moral compass as do the Rev. Wright and those many Americans of all colors who also see America as a force for evil; who also believe immoral American behavior caused the slaughter of 9/11; who similarly regard America as morally equivalent to its terrorist enemies; and who see Israel as the moral equivalent of those who seek to exterminate the Jewish state. But to distort the biblical prophets' values to mean the opposite of what they actually mean is arguably an even greater sin.

The essence of the real prophets was not that they said things that disturbed people; the moral essence of the prophets was their moral clarity. They knew the difference between good and evil. "Woe unto those who call good 'evil' and call evil 'good,'" said the Prophet Isaiah.

Those who cannot see the monumental moral gulf between America and the unspeakably evil jihadists America is fighting in Iraq and elsewhere are not prophets. Those who think Americans got what they deserved on 9/11 are not prophets. Those who think the Russian people were better off under Communism are not prophets. Those who think America developed AIDS and infected people of color with it are not prophets. Those who think America is more worthy of damnation than of blessing are not prophets. They are fools.